Book Reading #1: Gang Leader for a Day

As a whole, Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day provided an interesting, albeit legally gray, way of conducting an ethnography. I have basically zero knowledge of sociology, but I learned of two extremes of the discipline from the book: the almost clinical approach and the one that pushes the research in too deep. Sudhir's side of it made me wonder about the effectiveness of IRBs in certain instances. Of course they are intended to protect human rights of both the researchers and participants, but the collection of the more controversial data is what made Sudhir's study effective. At one point, he mentions how some researchers alienated themselves from the people they intended to study by gathering statistics from the police. While Sudhir gained personal knowledge of criminal activities that could have implicated himself, he also acquired a further understanding of the lifestyles of the residents of Robert Taylor. He lived in a morally gray area that hurt some people, but he personally did not intend to inflict this harm. It is very difficult to say whether he was completely justified or not. While I want to say that his contribution to the general body of knowledge was profound, I can't honestly decide whether that is enough to absolve him of the wrongs he inflicted on some of the residents. I tried to think of what I would do about the abusive manager, the bribe-taking building president, or overhearing a gang hit. When I realized that my personal decisions would resemble Sudhir's, naming simple observation with minimal interference, I had to pull back and think of how a research who followed IRB instructions would act. They probably would inform the police about criminal activities, but not only would the research likely suffer but they are also entrusting a blatantly corrupt police to solve the problem. On the other hand, the people Sudhir talked to were aware of this possibility, so perhaps approval from an IRB would not be detrimental in the least. From a legal or research standpoint, that's great, but the fact is that the moral boundary is very indistinct. I enjoyed reading the book, but it left me with more, perhaps too many, ethical questions than I had before I started it.

I was particularly perturbed by the last chapter of the book—not out of any sense of literary pacing, but because of the bleakness portrayed in it. It may have been fortunate for Sudhir that Robert Taylor was being torn down so that he would have a clean exit from the community, but that demolition was just one step in a long line of torments inflicted upon residents. The corruption inherent in the system, the federal crackdowns on gangs, and even more personal conflicts seemed to focus on the end of Sudhir's study as an ideal time to manifest. With all these problems rising up, the sorrow in Sudhir's voice at seeing the hopeful youth of the community flounder or die was plain. It was demoralizing to see that governmental incompetence or corruption led to people having to move to less favorable areas, leaving behind their friends and family. Also, while the federal crackdown was ostensibly benign, it fragmented a begrudging partnership between building tenants and gangs. The police response to that didn't help matters either. I don't think the federal government expected the local police, already entrusted to protect the area (but terrible at it), to take out their frustrations on even the more legal residents of Robert Taylor.

However, Sudhir's naivete and recklessness drove me insane. Certainly, I would expect someone new to an area to not be knowledgeable about the local culture, but after six years of hanging out with the residents of Robert Taylor, he hardly had a reason to be ignorant of the effects of sharing hustler research with others. It killed me that he would foolishly demolish his reputation within the community. Maybe that betrayal was the reason why his women's writing workshop further pushed him from the community. Maybe he had made himself a plausible target for any sort disdain and frustration, even when it was unjustified.